pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158 
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 1:50:07 GMT 5
Because you want to learn about them, have you read the book page I have linked? I have read parts of the pdf. I will continue to read it as work permits. |
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Post by theropod on Apr 4, 2014 1:51:53 GMT 5
mechafire: The long, heavy tail is actually an important locomotory organ in all reptiles that have one. It’s not simply additional weight without a use. pckts: How is relative prey size a relevant advantage? Extant reptiles outlass mammals in this regard! Reptiles are dominant today. Crocodilians are the largest extant predators that are at least partly terrestrial, and they are the dominant carnivores in many regions. Komodo dragons completely dominate in their area of distribution and they have no trouble dealing with large mammalian prey. Giant predatory avians that could very well compare to large modern carnivorans were present until the Pleistocene. And do you think there is only one way to bring down large prey, the feline way? Monitor lizards manage it, and so do lone canids on occasion. Now I must say is that 2t is the largest dicynodont I know of, but there’s no reason large Rauisuchians couldn’t have brought down such prey. They are not crocodilians, they have deep skulls and ziphodont teeth.
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Post by Supercommunist on Apr 4, 2014 1:58:04 GMT 5
Bears do not have jaws nearly as powerful as the postosuchus nor rely on them nearly as much(BTW you do realize polar bears do not coexist with lions or tigers and any account involving the two almost certainly involves captive animals and thus should be ignored). I am well aware crocodiles and hippos are killed by big cats, and vice versa but the method is not done through grappling but outflanking. Tigers and lions killing elephants and rhinos are fluke accounts and I have no idea why you even brought that up as neither animal bites in self defence. Like wise I see no relevant point in bringing monitor lizards up as the largest of komodo's are outweighed by a small lioness, and those that do live along side big cats are far smaller in size. Designed to grapple with ungulates that defend themselves with horns, hooves, and tusks, not massive jaws. The tiger is obviously a far better grappler, the question is whether employing those skills in a head to head fight with a postosuchus is a good idea. This how a big cat typically dispathces prey when taking them on in a face to face fight.  Since formidable prey items like buffalo and boar need to rely on head and neck movement to inflict damage with their tusks and horns all a tiger has to do is get a good grip on the animals head and neck to prevent it from retaliating, and then suffocate it. If a tiger attempted this on a postosuchus it is highly likely it will have its face bitten off. Lions seem to be well aware of this as in the rare instances they attempt to bring down a hippo or a large crocodile they never willingly stay within reach of its bite. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 4, 2014 2:13:02 GMT 5
How would a 250-300kg animal take down a 2 ton animal? Lets be realistic. Unless they hunted in packs there is no way that this animal could do it. They don't even have the forelimbs required to hang on and rip away at the hide of a larger animal. This animal would have to bite, shake and hold. It would be like watching a croc attack a adult elephant, rhino, cape buffalo or hippo. They don't have the limb strength required to tug of war a large animal. Watch Raja take down a gaur double his size. Once clamped on the Gaurs neck, raja uses his massive forelimbs to pull back and force the gaur to keep its hooves planted in the tug of war until its to late. A croc doesn't have that luxury. First of all, they could be 1 tonne too. Secondly, you don't need grappling forelimbs to kill animals significantly larger than yourself. Theropod clears this up. |
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pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 2:21:37 GMT 5
mechafire: The long, heavy tail is actually an important locomotory organ in all reptiles that have one. It’s not simply additional weight without a use. pckts: How is relative prey size a relevant advantage? Extant reptiles outlass mammals in this regard! Reptiles are dominant today. Crocodilians are the largest extant predators that are at least partly terrestrial, and they are the dominant carnivores in many regions. Komodo dragons completely dominate in their area of distribution and they have no trouble dealing with large mammalian prey. Giant predatory avians that could very well compare to large modern carnivorans were present until the Pleistocene. And do you think there is only one way to bring down large prey, the feline way? Monitor lizards manage it, and so do lone canids on occasion. Now I must say is that 2t is the largest dicynodont I know of, but there’s no reason large Rauisuchians couldn’t have brought down such prey. They are not crocodilians, they have deep skulls and ziphodont teeth. Crocs are smaller than the largest polar bears and kodiaks. Komodo dragons dominate in a isolated area where no large mammalian predators live, they also hunt by infection not by killing instantly. Canids are very capable of doing so, they have 4 nearly equal limbs, so that is not related. Monitor lizards do not bring down prey double or triple their size. The stakes become much higher when talking about 800kg animals compared to 40lb animals that would outweigh most monitors. I know your argument will be that it is relative, but it is not. The prey monitors hunt are not nearly as dangerous compared to that of a big cat.  |
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pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 2:27:50 GMT 5
Not sure where you got your info on extant reptiles taking larger prey than mammals because that is completely untrue. Here is a video of a large croc vs machli. She is able to take its back due to here superior speed and agility then its over. I would think a fight between these two would look similar to that. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYC_R-tsrEU |
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pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 2:29:29 GMT 5
How would a 250-300kg animal take down a 2 ton animal? Lets be realistic. Unless they hunted in packs there is no way that this animal could do it. They don't even have the forelimbs required to hang on and rip away at the hide of a larger animal. This animal would have to bite, shake and hold. It would be like watching a croc attack a adult elephant, rhino, cape buffalo or hippo. They don't have the limb strength required to tug of war a large animal. Watch Raja take down a gaur double his size. Once clamped on the Gaurs neck, raja uses his massive forelimbs to pull back and force the gaur to keep its hooves planted in the tug of war until its to late. A croc doesn't have that luxury. First of all, they could be 1 tonne too. Secondly, you don't need grappling forelimbs to kill animals significantly larger than yourself. Theropod clears this up. How do theropods clear that up? They are massive and most likely hunted smaller prey than themselves. Or hunted in packs etc.... |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 4, 2014 2:33:20 GMT 5
First of all, they could be 1 tonne too. Secondly, you don't need grappling forelimbs to kill animals significantly larger than yourself. Theropod clears this up. How do theropods clear that up? They are massive and most likely hunted smaller prey than themselves. Or hunted in packs etc.... Why come to the assumption that they hunted prey smaller than themselves (they probably did at times, but not everytime)? Secondly, by theropod, I meant the member's point in macropredatory animals. But so what if they're massive? They hunted massive prey. Admittedly some are proposed to have hunted in packs ( Mapusaurus), but sometimes killing significantly larger prey alone occurs. I could definitely see this with Postosuchus albeit also hunting smaller prey at times too. Not that I really think prey size is a good argument anyway. |
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pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 2:34:37 GMT 5
Bears do not have jaws nearly as powerful as the postosuchus nor rely on them nearly as much(BTW you do realize polar bears do not coexist with lions or tigers and any account involving the two almost certainly involves captive animals and thus should be ignored). I am well aware crocodiles and crocodiles are killed by big cats, and vice versa but the method is not done through grappling but outflanking. Tigers and lions killing elephants and rhinos are fluke accounts and I have no idea why you even brought that up as neither animal bites in self defence. Like wise I see no relevant point in bringing monitor lizards up as the largest of komodo's are outweighed by a small lioness, and those that do live along side big cats are far smaller in size. Designed to grapple with ungulates that defend themselves with horns, hooves, and tusks, not massive jaws. The tiger is obviously a far better grappler, the question is whether employing those skills in a head to head fight with a postosuchus is a good idea. Tigers grapple with a lot more than just Bovine. They hunt sloth bear, crocs, grizzly, black bears etc.... Crocs specifically have massive jaws and are the closest relative and the big cats dominate that relationship. Here is a vid of a hippo carcass in which none of the crocs can open until the hyenna get it open then they quickly disperse at the sound of a lions roar let a lone the sight. And there is over 50 crocs here and none want to stay and see what happens next. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTJpdzyyIe4 |
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pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 2:37:09 GMT 5
How do theropods clear that up? They are massive and most likely hunted smaller prey than themselves. Or hunted in packs etc.... Why come to the assumption that they hunted prey smaller than themselves (they probably did at times, but not everytime)? Secondly, by theropod, I meant the member's point in macropredatory animals. But so what if they're massive? They hunted massive prey. Admittedly some are proposed to have hunted in packs ( Mapusaurus), but sometimes killing significantly larger prey alone occurs. I could definitely see this with Postosuchus albeit also hunting smaller prey at times too. Because it was said "therapods clear that up" which means that there is proof of this. But there is no proof of that, in fact it is more commonly believed most where pack hunters and also hunted smaller prey or scavenged. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 4, 2014 2:42:10 GMT 5
I said "Theropod (the member) cleared it up". My post even says that.
I even admitted at least one is believed to be a pack hunter.
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pckts
Junior Member
Posts: 158
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Post by pckts on Apr 4, 2014 2:45:29 GMT 5
You implied that the existence of therapods was proof of them hunting larger prey than themselves. At least that was how I read it. If i misunderstood, I am sorry.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 4, 2014 2:52:44 GMT 5
It's quite alright.
Well, my main point here is that I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine Postosuchus at times hunting animals a lot larger than itself. It obviously won't do so all the time (and neither do tigers), but it could probably happen, given its ziphodont teeth causing lacerations to big prey and letting them bleed out.
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Post by Supercommunist on Apr 4, 2014 4:17:35 GMT 5
Any unbiased person will admit that a big cat could best all but the largest of crocodilians on land, but that has little context here. Crocodiles are semi aqautic animals, and pretty much only spend time on land when they are basking or guarding their nests and thus is not a good represnative for the terrestrial postosuchus.
Again I understand that, but how many of those animals have jaws as powerful as a postosuchus? Only crocodiles, and I have yet to see a single video where a tiger attacked and killed a crocodile by wrestling its head and killing it in a frontal attack. Also though bovines, cervids, and boar aren't the only animals they hunt they are certainly the most typical. Animals like bear and crocodiles are not common prey items.
They dominate on land where the crocodile is far more vulnerable, and again the semi aqautic reptile is a bad representation for the terrestrial postosuchus.
Irrelevant. Displacement means nothing in a fight, bears have been chased away by cats and lions fended off by small lizards.
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blaze
Paleo-artist 
Posts: 766
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Post by blaze on Apr 4, 2014 5:24:19 GMT 5
pcktsPostosuchus had legs proportioned similar to those of bears (tibia about 70% of femur length, flat feet) so they were not very agile and or fast runners compared to digitagrade (walks on toes), cursorial felids, I never said they were, though they didn't need to be as prey that was both fast and big was nonexistent in their environment, the biggest terrestrial animals that lived alongside Postosuchus and the only ones bigger than it were the large aeteosaurus Desmatosuchus and the large dicynodont Placerias, animals that were around 3m in head-body length at most and probably didn't surpass 1 tonne, both are unlikely to have been faster than Postosuchus. Anyway I'm not trying to convince you that the tiger will lose, I'm trying to make you aware that your original line of reasoning "all reptiles are the same, slow cold-blooded sprawling animals" is wrong. btw: the female tiger killing that crocodile, it definitely wasn't 14ft long, pay attention to the bulk and head-body length of the two, they are similar in both measures, real 14ft crocs can weight as much as half a tonne, that crocodile is about 11ft at most.
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